Disclaimer: The contents in this web site are only for your information and are not intended to be legal advice. While many of our applicants successfully obtain their I-140 approvals, the information here should not be considered as a guarantee of your green card application outcome.

Indian national on J visa and self-petition

I have checked your website so many times for the green card appication and information. I am contacting you because we want to file the green card application based on my wife’s qualification. She has done PhD from Ohio State University and currently she is doing a postdoc at Stanford University. She has 68 independent citations for 5 publications. We are Indian nationals. She is currently on OPT and Stanford will ask her to extend the OPT under STEM and then they will do J-1 visa. Under certain situation, they may offer H-1B visa. Can you please tell us what should be the best option for us. Does your DIY packets include specific situations like ours?

Please reply at your convenience.

Thank you,

ANSWER

You mentioned your wife is from India. For people born in India NIW green cards priority dates are around 4/2008. So currently this category would take a long time (things could change but hard to predict). EB1a dates are current and would allow to get a green card sooner.

With limited information you provided it is hard to tell if EB1A is possible. She would need to satisfy 3 out of 10 uscis criteria and show that 1) she is one of top researcher in the field (recommendation letters and publications) and 2) and there is sustained interest in her work (citations if spread over 3-4 yrs it helps). EB1a might be possible, we suggest you look at EB1a link on our page.

Also you should be aware if on OPT or J1, it is risky to apply for a green card unless you are confident of success. We suggest that she request her department to get a H1B instead if J1. Also if you are on a H1B visa then she would be able to work on a H4 (with the new immigration rules). In the last two cases (H1B or H4), even if EB1a is denied, you would be able to reapply with out loosing status. If you plan to apply, in your case, we suggest applying just i-140 first. You would be able to use our example packets.